When looking for the right project management software for your construction business, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by choice. To help you cut through the sales pitches and 30-day trials, we’ve pulled together the top three things that you can look for to make sure that you’re on the right track with your choice.
While this seems like an obvious one, it’s all too easy to get swept up in flashy presentations and promises from the sales team. Before you commit, make sure you have a chance to get hands-on and see that the tools do what you need them to do.
During or straight after you get a demo of the software, make yourself a checklist of the tools you want to see in action the most and make sure you get a chance to look at them all during your trial period. You may want to get a few people from your team on the trial to get more perspectives.
After all, the sales tools might work great, but if your operations team hates using them then it’s going to start falling flat.
This is where a few businesses can come undone. It can be easy to quickly stop thinking about why you need the software and fall into the trap of thinking about specific features you want. Doing this can lead you to think there is only one way to solve your problem and reject software that might be a perfect fit.
The trick to avoiding getting trapped in feature-based thinking is to clearly define your objectives before you get started. Instead of thinking “I need software that lets me drag and drop items into a quote”, try to focus on why you want this. For example, “my team complains that quoting takes too long, I need a tool that will make it faster.”
Thinking like this helps you keep an open mind, and gives you great questions to ask about on demos.
From onboarding to ongoing support, sometimes software-as-a-service providers can forget the “service” part of the industry altogether. It’s one thing to feel the love from the sales team, but you’ll want to make sure that the good service continues when you sign on the dotted line and get started with your project management software of choice.
There are a few things you can do to get a feel of what life will be like as a customer. Checking reviews and reading over case studies and testimonials will give you a snapshot of what current customers think and any highlights or pitfalls in the service they receive.
Understanding the support that you can have access to is also important. Don’t be afraid to ask questions like “how long does it usually take to get a reply from your support team?” to really understand what to expect. Get a clear idea of the support that you can access to help with onboarding and day to day running so you can understand what life will be like when you have issues.
WorkGuru can help with everything from stock management to asset management, quotes to invoicing, and of course project management.
Construction Project Management Software On The Go! 4 Ways WorkGuru Can Help.
The software was purposely designed to help businesses that build, make, design and maintain assets. You can read more about how we help the construction industry by clicking here.
If you’d like to see WorkGuru in action, get in touch with the team today. We’ll take you through the platform with a free hands-on training session.